Alrey Batol will be presenting an interactive installation, Touch Machine.

Touch Machine questions the value of touch and the physical body in our own art community, how ready are we to touch and what do we expect will happen? These questions are framed in Batol’s signature use of hacking technology. In this case, it is a hacked radio, which provides the sonic response to how two people approach (ie. testing the sensitivity and frequency of) touching each other. ‘Touch Machine’ shows how Batol’s live art process has developed since his last work in progress, ‘Waterbirds’ was shown at Metro Arts’ Friday Night: May 2013. Inspired by the live art and ready-to-interact audience that fill Metro Art’s Friday Night, Touch Machine further tests the viewers’ interactivity with machines and each other.

Leif Gifford will be presenting a live performance, Contained Explosions.

Contained Explosions is the next stage of development in Gifford’s ‘Explosive Tendencies’ series of audio-visual experiments. Her performance for Friday Night, incorporates previous sculptural works with her new videomapping processes. Within the immersiv installation, she animates, destroys and rebuilds her memories with cues from live music and projections. Enter Leif’s collapsing and renewing world of sculpture, projection and exploding memories. She invites us into a scribbly, colourful, volatile world inside all of our heads, whilst technically testing the boundaries of videomapping and textile sculpture.

Leif Gifford for her exist@Metro performance uses a technique called video mapping.

This is a relatively new technique in live video art where projections are mapped to architectural or sculptural structures. Adding audio to the video mapping experience can make the performance like contemporary theatre or being in a live music video. Gifford’s abstractions are well-developed and use drawing as a base, rather than graphic design which is commonly used commercially. As the video mapping software develops so does the artform.

Within Trace there was a piece that uses a similar electrical process, as Batol’s ‘Touch Machine.’
It is Joyce Hinterding’s “Large ULAM VLF Loop.”
Essentially in Hinterding’s work your body is completing an extra extra low volatge circuit between the alligator clip and the graphite on the wall, and in Batol’s work your body is completing an extra extra low voltage circuit with somebody else’s body as each of you you hold onto a knob. Technically, you could use two bodies in Hinterding’s work also, but it is set up for solo interaction with just one set of headphones.

“Pop on the headphones and then touch the graphite pattern that is painted on the wall. As a naturally very curious person I found this intriguing, and I find that point where science and art meet fascinating. I spent at least 8 minutes touching different parts of the pattern, to see how the sound coming through the headphones was affected.

I had a very interesting sensation immediately after taking off the cans. The buzzing continued in my ears for a few minutes, which was very disorienting in the quiet environment of the gallery. While I had been immersed in the artwork with the headphones on, as soon as they came off and I looked away, it was as if I’d just woken from a deep sleep, with earplugs in and I still couldn’t hear anything.

I enjoyed this artwork as it is not often that I am invited to interact with a piece, and while the sounds were not pleasant to listen to, it was interesting to hear the changes according to where I placed my hands, and sometimes face.”

PERIL magazine’s Eleanor Jackson had this to say about Batol’s work Read more here

“Batol, a multi-disciplinary artist with intersecting interests across the mediums of intervention, new media and sculpture, will be presenting the interactive installation, Touch Machine. Drawing upon some of Batol’s signature approaches to exploiting technology for unpredicted ends, the work features hacked technologies that provide sonic response to incidents of human touch.

The tactile and the technological provide delicious contrast and congruence for modern-day audiences. On one hand, video games, mobile devices and personal computers all employ haptic feedback in increasingly ubiquitous and normalized ways. On the other hand, human touching and feeling, and the accompanying social interactivity implied in physical touch – particularly between strangers – seems to present something more dangerous and unexpected. Our phones may be on vibrate for each other, but when it comes down to it, Batol asks “how ready are we to touch and what do we expect will happen?”

What do you think about Alrey Batol’s work?
Comment on your blog and leave a link #EXISTari PRETTY PRETTY PLEASE